The UK detains people indefinitely under immigration rules. Bail hearings go unrecorded, people are picked up without notice, individuals feel abandoned in detention centres with no way of knowing when they will be released. Poets, novelists and writers are collaborating to tell these first-hand stories that otherwise would have stayed under wraps. 

Presenting their accounts anonymously, as modern day counterparts to the pilgrims’ stories in the Canterbury Tales, the Refugee Tales offer rare, intimate glimpses into otherwise untold suffering.

Since 2015, the Refugee Tales project has shared the stories of people who have experienced immigration detention, in the context of large-scale public walks. In so doing, the project has continuously called out the fact that the UK is the only country in Europe that detains people indefinitely under immigration rules. 

In this talk, the co-organiser of Refugee Tales, David Herd, considers the project’s work in light of the seventieth anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention, a document that committed to prohibiting the expulsion of refugees.